Opa has had some cranky days as of late. And no wonder. Since
his yearly physical, which included a cystoscopy that was done a couple of months ago, it has been one thing
after another. First he had a nasty fall that resulted in 8 stitches, a CT scan
and a 10 hour overnight wait in the ER.
A couple of weeks later, Opa woke up one
morning with
Bell's Palsy. We knew that it wasn't a stroke because
he was unable to move the eyebrow on the affected side of his face (stroke
victims are able) and had no weakness in his arms or legs. But it was still quite distressing, for me anyway.
The effects of
Bell’s Palsy are bad enough, but the dementia created a huge challenge. Opa
could not remember why his eye was dry. All he knew was that he wanted to
rub it. So he did. Every two minutes. His eye was a mess in no time, red and
irritated, with the lower lid hanging lower and lower. Solution: preservative-free eye drops, ointment, and an eye-patch.
As usual, Opa was quite calm about the situation. But I was
not. I hovered over him like a mother hen, putting in eye drops every couple of
hours, making sure he kept his eye-patch on, applying the ointment at night.
How annoying this must have been for him! At first, he didn’t show it. But
after a week of this, he told me in no uncertain terms that he would no longer
wear the patch and would take care of his own eye, thank you very much. So what
could I do except to take a deep breath and hope for the best?
As it turned
out, the symptoms improved dramatically each day, without any interference from
me and despite Opa's frequent eye rubbing. I was quite amazed that, a week later, Opa’s recovery from
Bell's Palsy was complete!
.
Opa has also been challenged with
intermittent bouts of incontinence, an unexpected adverse side-effect of the
cystoscopy, which we were told should resolve in time. I bought him Tena
protective guards which also had an unwanted side-effect, though it took me a
few days to realize it. Several times I was greeted in the morning by soaked
mats in the bathroom and standing water in the basement below. The toilet
wasn’t plugged so what was going on? I finally clued. Opa must have been quite
persistent during the nights when he tried, with eventual success, to flush the offending guards down the toilet! So, needless to say, the guards were scrapped, and we
persevere instead with frequent changes of clothing and bedding, never
straying too far from a bathroom. When blood appeared in Opa’s urine today,
we went to a walk-in clinic.
Poor Opa. Turns out
he has a bladder infection.
Keeping fingers crossed that there will be no
more setbacks and that Opa will be back in good form in a few days.
